CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT VIEW — Much debate is now underway about whether Russian president Vladimir Putin will sustain lasting political damage from the June 24 revolt led by Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Some analysts cautiously hint that Putin is hurt badly, many say not much, and most say it’s just too soon to tell.
To be sure, there is much we don’t know, and predicting anything in Russia is perilous business — but my long-held view is that the war from the very beginning, unleashed trends likely to loosen Putin’s grip on power. Exactly how, when and whether this happens, will be affected by many things including fortunes in the war, the condition of the Russian economy, and what support he can maintain from partners such as China. But assuming the continued deterioration that I expect, the key questions are how long it will take and what form it will take over time – an easing out or ouster, a resignation, or perhaps most likely, a weakened and ineffective leader clinging to power in a drained and dispirited nation that lacks both the power and influence it had earlier in Putin’s tenure.
The backdrop of course, is the rebellion launched on June 24 by Prigozhin. The Wagner leader briefly took over Russia’s war command headquarters at Rostov-on-Don and moved his forces to within 120 miles of Moscow. Prigozhin’s message was as important as his actions; he charged that corrupt, ambitious politicians and generals were sending young Russians to die in a war with the false rationale that Ukraine and NATO were threatening Russia.
Prigozhin’s actions threaten Putin’s reputation, authority, and fortunes at three levels: – societal, among elites, and in the Ukraine war.
At the societal level, Prigozhin’s rant unleashed what I came to think of during previous work on authoritarian societies, as a virus of truth. Much of the Russian population may be numbed by endless falsehoods spinning out of Putin’s propaganda machine. But in authoritarian societies, a person of influence saying out loud what many suspect or think but fear to say – that the war makes no sense and has been badly mismanaged — gives tacit permission to others to engage in more candid discussion than the regime permits. Ultimately, fewer people believe. (I saw this happen often in the late 1980s, as Soviet rule began to crumble in Moscow’s East European satellite states).
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This falls on fertile ground. That’s what I took from a conversation I had recently at a conference with a well-informed Russian person (the conference did not permit attribution). This person, fresh from long residency in Russia (and speaking before Prigozhin’s mutiny), estimated that at most, about 25 percent of the population supported the war, about 25 percent opposed it, and the remaining 50 percent understood that the war is wrong — but just didn’t want to think about it. ‘That 50 percent takes refuge in the government’s version without totally buying it’, my contact explained. I think the government’s post-mutiny propaganda blitz is targeted on that group. But for those who want to look away, Prigozhin’s actions focus attention in a way that nothing has before. Inevitably, Russians will discuss what he did and take positions on it.
Putin’s strategy has been to give people only two choices: silence or support. It is now much harder to enforce silence.
At the second level, that of the Russian elites, they have just seen someone with arguably elite status, challenge Putin and get away with it (at least so far). While Prigozhin has never been in Putin’s tight inner circle, he had been a close ally and supporter of the president. Exactly why Prigozhin is free to roam about unpunished and to meet with Putin remains a mystery, assuming any of this is true. Since the mutiny, the only Prigozhin sighting that has been reported has come from a grainy video seemingly out of Belarus (in which Prigozhin continues to denounce the Russian military leadership. Regarding Prigozhin’s survival, the theory that makes the most sense to me is that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group is simply too important for Putin to push aside, given its success in Ukraine and deployments in Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic – where it generally acts on behalf of Russia’s interests.
Mapping Putin’s inner circle is difficult but reporting over years spotlights seven or eight figures, mostly former intelligence service colleagues, personal security officers, and business chiefs. None speak publicly but we are starting to see reports of insecurity and doubt at this level about Putin’s strategy — and pessimism about the outcome of the war.
The mutiny also sparked doubts among business leaders and others about whether the security services remain loyal to Putin, given their seeming inability to stop Prigozhin’s forces moving toward Moscow – and the appearance of resignation or cooperation conveyed by their posture, as Prigozhin moved into Russian command facilities at Rostov-on-Don. All of this has surely raised doubt for Putin himself about the fidelity of his support among those he needs to sustain power.
The loyalty of business and political elites to Putin has rested on the assumption that his tight vertical control of the government protects their privileges and enriches them. Prigozhin, in other statements, asserts that the regime finds a way to seize businesses and distribute the spoils among an elite group of oligarchs – a system I’ve heard described also by a Russian business person victimized by the practice. But Putin comes out of these last few weeks looking wobbly. It is simply hard to believe that the class that relies on his “system” is not shaken and anxious about the future.
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Third, Prigozhin’s rebellion will leave its mark on the war itself. From the beginning, it was clear that Russian forces suffered shortfalls in logistics, leadership, and command and control. Their weakness on these measures is one of the reasons that the Wagner Group’s strong performance in Bakhmut (one of Russia’s few clear cut victories) earned Prigozhin such credibility and influence.
But the major impact of the mutiny and aftermath on the war, is that they will further weaken the intangible but crucial factor: the will to fight.
The deficit on the Russian side is well-documented in testimony from defectors and POWs and in open source radio conversations intercepted early in the war, in which troops excoriated their commanders their training, a lack of supplies and Putin himself.
Later in the war, Russian POWs spoke of being ‘deceived’ about the justification for the war. There is no reason to think that events since then have diminished their cynicism. In fact, few things undermine an army’s morale more than evidence of division, confusion, and weakness at the top of the chain. This was seen most recently in public comments by dismissed Major General Ivan Popov, a respected and more conventional figure, who joins Prigozhin in sharply condemning senior commanders for dishonesty and politicking.
Absorbing all of this, I found myself recalling the depressing effect on soldiers in Vietnam in 1968, as we watched assassinations, protest, dysfunction, and turbulence in American politics – which made it doubly hard to understand and focus on the mission or to believe what leaders told us about that war.
In gauging Putin’s future, we are handicapped by the limited precedent for leadership change in post-Soviet Russia. In Soviet days, the communist party Politburo acted when a leader was ill or dying (Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko) or politically faltering (Khrushchev). In the Russia we’ve known since 1991, governments changed either with Boris Yeltsin’s resignation in 1999, or with a series of increasingly less fair elections. Given the electoral strictures Putin has in place, we are unlikely to see him voted out.
If the war remains disastrous for Russia, support among military and security officials at various levels might erode to the point where Putin lacks the power base essential to sustaining an autocracy. I have imagined elsewhere that a group drawn from such a cohort might act as an informal politburo and inform Putin that he should retire while he can preserve some status and take care of his family. But working against this may be the hesitancy of opponents and rivals and the tendency we’ve seen toward sycophancy among his advisors. And there is a low likelihood in modern Russia, of East European style mass uprisings.
Even if no one moves against him and he retains power, Putin is likely to become someone he never imagined: an enfeebled leader, labeled a war criminal, clinging to power in a country still under sanctions, and surrounded by a coterie of sycophants and officials more worried about their own futures than his.
I doubt that anyone among his followers at home and enablers abroad, if being candid, would seriously dispute that the war was a tragic miscalculation. It’s purported ideological rationales have evaporated; it is now just a contest of violence. This is tragic not only in and of itself but for what it has thrown away for Russia and for Putin. With whatever faults of governance and behavior, Putin had led Russia to influence beyond its actual weight and was treated, even if with reluctance or distaste, as an equal by most other global leaders. It is now almost impossible for him to escape pariah status and because of that, to lead Russia back to that position of influence.
Bismarck once said that the secret of politics was “to make a good treaty with Russia”. Chances are there’s not a very long line these days.
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